


stars sing my name, scars tell my story

by whymylife (nabringa)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anakin actually listens to the Force, Anakin becomes his own sort of Jedi, Anakin has a crush, Canon Divergence - Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, Canon-Typical Violence, Clone Rights, Communication, Culture Shock, Dreams and Nightmares, Fix-It, Gen, Healthy Relationships, Jedi Philosophy (Star Wars), Minor Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Not Canon Compliant, Order 66 Didn't Happen (Star Wars), Scars, Shmi Skywalker Lives, Slavery, The Force, Young Anakin Skywalker, and how Anakin interacts with it, as explored by a nine year old, attachment does not equal love, remember that promise Anakin made about freeing slaves?, that's this fic, what it means to be enslaved and what it means to be free, when Anakin goes to the temple, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:34:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29505588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nabringa/pseuds/whymylife
Summary: Anakin wasn’t sure how to ask, so he didn't.Instead, he waited until Master Kenobi fell asleep and stayed up to tinker in the dark, building his own scanner out of parts stolen from the trash.The chip was in his right thigh.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Shmi Skywalker, CT-7567 | Rex & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 69
Kudos: 283
Collections: Guerra_das_Estrelas





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Vaguely inspired by some of the worldbuilding of Coruscanti Regency by be_brave13.

By the time he is nine, Anakin Skywalker knows the stories behind every one of his mother’s scars.

He was in many of them, after all. He’s the one who ran for the healer when Watto broke her wrist, who held her hand while a grandmother bandaged the bleeding welts on her back, who brought her the last of their water to drink when her neck and throat were so torn she couldn’t bear to whisper.

He has his own collection of cuts and bruises and scrapes-- some from the hands of careless masters, but many more from the occupational hazard of being an active child. Nothing to rival his mother’s marks.

Each of his mother’s scars came with a story, and each story came with a warning. A lesson. Do not talk back, lift your head, draw attention to yourself. Do not fail your responsibilities. Do not upset your master.

One day, when he was seven, his mother sat Anakin down and explained what it meant to be a slave. She explained that she didn’t know where his chip was implanted, or hers. She explained why Watto kept their detonators strung around his neck. She explained exactly what would happen if he tried to escape.

She pulled her shirt up and showed him the scars across her stomach and breasts and explained what it meant to live in a body you do not own, what it meant to say a child had no father.

“Do not refuse,” she said. “Do not fight.”

“You cannot say no.”

Shmi tipped his chin up and held his gaze. “Your mind-- your memories, your thoughts, your beliefs-- is the only thing that is truly yours. Nobody can take it from you, but it can be given into the hands of another. Guard it carefully. Use it well.”

Taking both of his hands in her own, she pressed them against her sides and smiled. “Anakin Skywalker,” she said. “That is your name. It was my gift to you, my love, and a freely given gift cannot be stolen.”

Anakin traced the white lines on her ribs with steady hands and nodded.

***

Those are not the only stories his mother tells, for along with the lessons of obedience and submission carved into her flesh Shmi Skywalker learned that hope was more filling than bread, more refreshing than water.

So she weaves hope into her words and prays that will be enough to sustain her son.

She tells stories of planets far from Tatooine and the Hutts and Watto. Stories of green deserts and cities taller than they are wide and water that falls from the sky. Stories of villains and heroes and war and peace across the galaxy. Stories of escape and freedom and making choices. Of boundless love and righteous anger.

One night she tells him a story about a Jedi Knight, who flew across space and time to a pirate’s den and threw the doors open with his mind, cutting down slavers and cutting through chains with a sword made from starlight.

***

On days when Anakin wakes from dreams of stars and swords and broken chains, he spends his free time hiding in a cupboard in Watto’s shop. He sits in the dark and draws his knees up to his chest and closes his eyes. There’s a low hum all around him, in the wood and the air and clothes on his back. In his blood. He breathes in, and tugs, and the door swings shut. He breathes out and pushes, and the door eases open.

One particularly slow day after a particularly bad night, he spent an hour like that, practicing pulling the door closed and pushing it open inch by inch in time with his breathing, something singing under his skin.

His mother hadn’t said why or how, but some of the things the Jedi in the story did, he could do, too. Things like moving objects without touching them and making people believe him without question.

His mother knew. She’d told him never to practice in front of anyone, but hadn’t forbidden him from practicing at all.

So he practiced. He opened doors, and he listened to the song in his bones, and he played back scenes from his mother’s stories, and he wondered.

Maybe if he practiced enough he could escape and become a Jedi and find his own sword of starlight. Maybe he could come back and free all the rest of the slaves.

Something in the heavens and the earth and his whole being said ‘YES’ all at once, and he repeated himself just to feel the rightness of it.

He was going to become a Jedi, and free slaves.

***

He dreams of flying through endless space, reaching for blazing stars with bare hands and cradling them to his chest, wrapped warm in the thrumming presence he recognizes by now but does not have a name for.

The stardust coats his hands with silver and blue, and he wakes up with shimmer under his fingernails.

***

“Have you come to free us?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

***

Master Jinn took the detonator away from Anakin as soon as they were outside the city.

He said it was dangerous for Anakin to be carrying it around, dangerous for him to be holding his own life in his hands like that.

Anakin wanted to scream when Master Jinn took that small piece of plastoid from his hands, stole his freedom from him minutes after he’d won it by wagering his life and more than just his life.

But.

Master Jinn was going to take him to Coruscant, to be a Jedi, and the whirring under his skin said ‘yes’ said ‘come’ said ‘now’.

So Anakin didn’t talk back or lift his head or draw attention to himself. He couldn’t risk failure, he couldn’t risk upsetting Master Jinn. He’d just have to wait and see if Master Jinn would give it back, or if he would have to steal it or work for it or fight for it all over again.

Blue and silver sparked when he clenched his fists.

***

Anakin wasn’t sure how to ask, so he didn't.

Instead, he waited until Master Kenobi fell asleep and stayed up to tinker in the dark, building his own scanner out of parts stolen from the trash.

Even the trash in the Jedi temple was better quality than what he used to steal or buy new on Tatooine.

The scanner takes three days to build, and when it’s done he sits and looks at it for a long time, before shoving it in the back of a drawer unused, suddenly afraid. Of what, he’s not sure. He already knows what the scanner will find.

After two weeks, he wakes from a nightmare in which the sand turned as red as the desert sunset and rose with the evening wind to twist around him, getting in his eyes and mouth and nose and ears and burning with the heat of twin-suns and hate, sand red with the blood of his people binding him and suffocating him and condemning him.

Anakin wakes, and goes straight to the drawer.

The chip is in his right thigh.

It’s a smart place to put it, he thinks distantly. One click of a button and his entire leg would be blown off, and he would bleed to death in minutes. If he had immediate medical attention he could survive, crippled, with no chance of running ever again.

Anakin dismantles the scanner, throws all the parts back in the trash, and goes back to bed.

He wonders where the detonator is-- where Master Jinn put it. If Master Kenobi had it, now.

He wonders when he’s going to be able to stop calling people ‘master’.

He rolls over onto his side and tries to chase the red away with darkness.

***

Master Kenobi insisted on taking him to see a healer once they were settled into their rooms and schedules. Apparently Anakin was malnourished or something, and needed a full inspection anyway.

Anakin wasn’t sure how to feel about that. On one hand, he could not say no. On the other, the thought of strangers touching him and inspecting him and writing down all the ways in which he was a failure for his new master to read made something in his chest feel tight and hot.

When they get to the Halls of Healing Master Kenobi asks if Anakin wants to go in alone, and Anakin immediately says yes. He knows that any information about Anakin Master Kenobi wants he can find easily, but this will spare him the awkwardness of having to sit through this inspection with his master’s eyes on him.

The Healer is a twi-lek lady who introduces herself as Healer Che, and she is gentle and asks a lot of questions in a soft, soothing voice. She makes him take his shirt off, but nothing else. She does a full body scan, but not a deep one.

She doesn’t find the chip. Probably because she wasn’t looking for it, specifically. Or didn’t know how to ask.

Anakin isn’t sure why he is relieved by that.

After he puts his shirt back on and the healer finishes writing on her datapad, she walks him back out to where Master Kenobi is and hands him a few sheets of flimsi. They talk for a bit, Master Kenobi’s distress growing louder and louder as the conversation goes on.

Anakin tunes most of it out, standing straight and letting his eyes wander over the cool gray stone of the hall. They’re talking about meal plans and growth patterns and childhood trauma and scarring-- that last one he recognizes, but he doesn’t have nearly as many scars as his mother, so he’s not sure why it would be a concern-- and they keep talking and going over flimsi and datapads while Anakin stays still and silent and invisible.

He knows how this goes.

Finally Master Kenobi thanks the healer and turns to leave, and Anakin falls into step behind him without having to be told. Master Kenobi glances back, relaxing when his eyes land on Anakin.

Master Kenobi sighs, straightens, and smiles.

Anakin smiles tentatively in return.

***

One day, when he had been at the temple for a month, Master Kenobi sat Anakin down and explained what it meant to be a Jedi. He went over each tenet of the Jedi Code and what it entailed. He explained what the Council was and how it worked, and the social structure of the temple. He explained what a Padawan was and the role he would play in Anakin’s life as his Master. 

He unhooked his lightsaber from his belt and explained what it meant to say a Jedi’s lightsaber was their life, and the responsibility a Jedi had to spend their lives fighting injustice and bringing peace across the galaxy once they were Knighted. 

“It’s your job to refuse,” he said. “It’s your job to fight.” 

“You must be the one to say no.” 

Master Kenobi tipped his chin up and held his gaze. “Your mind-- your memories, your thoughts, your beliefs-- do not belong to you anymore. You are one with the Force, and the Force is with you. Listen to her. Allow her to direct you for the good of all.” 

Taking both of Anakin’s hands in his own, Master Kenobi placed his lightsaber in his palm. “Your name doesn’t matter, once you become a Jedi. You give up everything you are, freely, for the benefit of others; sacrificing personal feelings and desires for the good of all.” 

Anakin traced the grip of the hilt with trembling hands and nodded. 

***

Anakin still isn’t sure what to make of Master Kenobi. 

He’s young, and only became a Knight so he could take Anakin after Master Jinn died. Anakin hadn’t thought Master Kenobi liked him much at first, but he hadn’t been cruel or dismissive then or now so maybe that first impression was off. 

Master Kenobi asks to be called Obi-Wan when it’s just them. 

Obi-Wan gets a panicky look on his face when Anakin asks a question or doesn’t understand something from his lessons, but he always sits and patiently explains whatever it is Anakin is confused about. He collects their meals from the canteen and makes sure Anakin eats every bite, and fixes tea for both of them with breakfast and before bed. The soothing hum coming off him mingles with the jarring tones of sorrow and grief, but after a while it calms and becomes familiar.

He didn’t try to touch Anakin, either to hug him like family would or beat him like a master would, but he smiled whenever Anakin caught his eye.

That is enough.

***

Pretty much everyone at the temple is a master, and while it is vastly different from Tatooine Anakin still aches at the unfairness.

He was supposed to have his chip taken out, to crush the detonator with his own hands, to call people by their names and be called by his name in return.

The temple is different, but not in a way that matters.

There is good and bad. The people are all either masters or strangers and call him ‘Padawan’ instead of ‘Anakin Skywalker’. He doesn’t have a lot of free time, but he is allowed to wander as he pleases when he does. He has his own bed and even his own room. The lessons are more interesting and the punishments less harsh. He doesn’t know how to read yet, but he's better than anyone his age at math, and he revels in that feeling of superiority even as shame curls in his gut when Master Kenobi has to help him stumble through the Basic alphabet. 

When he’s frustrated, he sits in his closet and pulls the door closed, and pushes it open.

***

One of the first things Anakin realized about the Jedi was that they thought themselves free.

His history classes were filled with stories of Jedi Knights fighting against slavery across the galaxy, priding themselves on defending the freedom of all sentient species. They were all variations of the same story he’d been told and retold when he was a child, the same story that used to fill his dreams with victory and starlight.

He sat through those lessons with 'I’m afraid not' ringing in his ears and a cold blue burn seeping through his chest.

But even as they freed all other life in the galaxy, the Jedi bound themselves tighter and tighter to their Code. 

The Jedi’s rules didn’t revolve around what you did and did not do, though there was certainly some of that. Their rules governed the choices you were allowed to make, how you were allowed to think, what you were allowed to believe about yourself and the world. 

The Jedi gave their minds over to an organization and an ideal, and fulfilled their responsibilities out of love. They gave of themselves freely until there was nothing left to give. 

It made Anakin sick to his stomach at first, and a more than a little bit scared. He argued and fought and debated each tenet of the Jedi Code as it was being taught to him, refusing to accept it at face value. Obi-Wan patiently explained the reasoning behind each tenet, each rule, each additional regulation. The dangers of attachments, of passionate emotions, of chaos without control. The freedom found in the Force. 

It all sounded very nice and pretty and noble, but something inside Anakin rebelled at the thought of living life as a detached peacekeeper, as a blunted blade in the hands of an incomprehensible being. 

He’d wanted to become a Jedi to free slaves.

***

Obi-Wan didn’t seem to be overly concerned about his lack of choices when Anakin asked him about it, and instead laughed and grumbled good naturedly and told stories of going on missions he didn’t personally approve of.

Anakin went to bed that night more terrified about his future than he’d ever been, and dreamed of golden chains around his wrists and ankles and a golden muzzle over his mouth.

***

As Anakin got older, Obi-Wan started to spend more of his free time in the archives or the gardens, leaving Anakin alone in their rooms for longer and longer periods of time.

Usually Anakin was happy to tinker with whatever parts he’d gotten his hands on recently, but one afternoon after a night of particularly bad nightmares and morning of increasingly frustrating lessons, he set down his tools and went to Obi-Wan’s room.

The room itself was mostly bare, a rock and a plant making up the most significant clutter. The bed was made neatly, spare robes were hanging in a row, a meditation mat was rolled tightly in a corner.

Anakin searched through everything. Through every drawer and shelf, in the closet and under the bed, behind the stacks of holonovels on the desk. He shifted the rock and dug through the plant’s soil and unrolled the mat.

He found nothing.

Whatever Master Jinn did with the detonator, Master Kenobi did not have it.

Instead of reassuring him, finally proving his suspicions wrong only sent him onto more of a tailspin. If Master Kenobi didn’t have the detonator, who did? Had it burned with Master Jinn? Was it somewhere in Theed, lost in the street or in the vents of the power generator? What if somebody found it? What if they didn’t know what it was? What if they turned it on by accident?

Anakin felt fear swelling in his gut, and after putting Obi-Wan’s room back together he spent the last hour of his free time frantically finding and assembling the parts for a signal jammer.

He finished putting it together late that night. It was small, smaller than a detonator remote.

He braided some old twine to hang the jammer from, strung it around his neck, and slept.

He did not dream.

***

Chancellor Palpatine’s smile was a cacophony of conflicting notes, eagerness and insincerity mixing with danger and delight.

Anakin smiled his own lies and answered questions in short, sharp bursts until the meeting was over.

He begged Obi-Wan not to send him back.

So Obi-Wan frowned and nodded and made excuses the next few times Palpatine requested a private audience with his Padawan. The requests became less frequent over time, though they never stopped completely.

***

‘Skywalker’, a voice called, and Anakin followed the song of the stars through the winding passages on Ilum.

His completed lightsaber shone blue and silver.

***

It took Anakin a while to realize it, but Obi-Wan was free. Free and content. He embraced this life and this Code fully, thriving on the structure and maintaining his individualism within it.

He didn’t talk much about his time learning under Master Jinn, but Anakin assembled an idea of it from snide comments about late bloomers sticking together, about the wayward coming home.

Anakin wondered if whatever happened during his Padawanship had given Obi-Wan a real choice in weather to become a Jedi or not.

He wondered if Obi-Wan would answer questions about it, if he asked.

The day Anakin heard Obi-Wan question the Council’s decision on a matter was one of the best days of his life, even if Obi-Wan did as directed in the end.

After studying the other Knights and Masters and even some Padawans, Anakin found that he was, for the most part, alone in his dissatisfaction with the Code. These people were born free to choose, and so they chose to give up their freedom. They willingly gave their minds over to an organization and an ideal, and lived without regret.

Anakin didn’t have to wonder why those who had freely chosen a lifestyle would force it on a slave.

***

No matter what he tried, Anakin never felt fully settled at the temple, his buzzing discontent resonating off the stone halls until he couldn’t tell his frustration apart from his home.

He loved to learn, but most of what he learned he didn’t know if he agreed with. There were others his age to befriend, but they were raised in the creche and he was raised on a Rim world and there was no mutual desire for understanding. The Masters and Knights didn’t have much time for half-trained Padawans, and Anakin wasn’t sure he would have gotten on well with them anyway.

So Anakin practiced every kind of fighting technique he could get Obi-Wan to teach him and tinkered with spare parts and sometimes wandered the gardens or archives, but usually he talked to Obi-Wan or listened to the Force.

Obi-Wan and the Force were the only constants in his life, but Anakin found he didn’t mind that much.

Obi-Wan’s affection grew from a single fragile note to a steady beat, and Anakin could feel it thrumming around him when they spent time together meditating or training. A hand on his shoulder or a smile in his direction reverberated in the Force, and though Obi-Wan never said it Anakin could hear that he was loved.

Obi-Wan loved him, and liked being around him and teaching him even when he caused trouble, and that was more than Anakin had ever expected from the man who had been so reluctant to take him on in the first place.

The Force loved him too, and told him so.

It had taken him longer than it should have to connect the nebulous idea of ‘the Force’ his masters and teachers spoke of to the symphony he lived and breathed, but now Anakin called her by her name and was called by his name in return. Now he practiced in plain sight, encouraged and directed by many who could do the same things he could do. Now he knew how to ask questions and find answers, and he was learning to listen better and better every day.

***

‘Skywalker’, she called, and he woke with stardust lining his palms.

***

Every night, Anakin dreams.

He dreams of standing on battlefields drenched in the blood of his brothers, of a hazy figure pressing a strand of Padawan beads into his hand that cut like shards of glass, of burning and burning and crumbing to ash.

On the night of the seventh anniversary of the Boonta Eve Classic, Anakin Skywalker dreams of his mother.

She is standing just where he left her, just inside the door of their home. Every scar she has is a fresh wound, every drop of blood she's ever shed is pooling at her feet, and she is smiling. She is bleeding and smiling and she says, “This is my story, not yours. Do not look back, Anakin Skywalker.”

‘No,’ he says, and wakes up crying.

***

It’s months of the same dream night after night, of exhaustion and grief and anger discordant and disorienting, of being asked over and over if he was alright, if he was eating enough, if he was sleeping well--

It was months before he went to Obi-Wan.

Recounting the dream felt like excavating his soul. All his old memories and dreams and promises came rising up to the surface as he explained about his mother, and how she was still enslaved, and how her pain was haunting him. How he couldn’t stop looking back. He tried to harmonize with the Force, let his emotions be lifted into her melody, but there was too much and it was too loud.

So he cries and he screams he and paces, and Obi-Wan sits calmly and lets him. When Anakin finally collapses into a chair, Obi-Wan walks over sits shoulder to shoulder with his Padawan and pulls Anakin into a hug, wrapping them both in song and light. They sit and hold each other and meditate, dwelling on and examining the emotions they are both feeling, and Anakin is shocked to find that not all the anger and grief throbbing in the air is his own. With Obi-Wan’s help he gathers each disparate string of notes and weaves them together-- layers them into a prayer-- and sings his broken hymn with all his being until he feels peace beating steady in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan says, rubbing soothing circles on Anakin’s back. “I should have asked about her, I should have done something a long time ago. It was wrong of Qui-Gon to leave your mother behind.”

And for an instant the vindication and hope are so pure and clear they are almost overwhelming--

And then Anakin wants to start crying all over again, because it’s not just his mother, and it’s not just him. It’s Kitster and Wald and their families, it’s the grandmothers and aunts and uncles of the slave quarters who helped raise him, it’s every slave on Tatooine, in Hutt territory-- it’s every living being with a chip under their skin and their detonator in another’s hands.

But Anakin can’t do anything for them. He’s not a Jedi yet. He’s not even free.

So he presses his face into Obi-Wan’s shoulder and whispers, “Thank you.”

That is enough.

***

In his dream his mother stands just where he left her, and her tears water patches of green in the sand at her feet.

***

A month later Obi-Wan leaves their quarters early in the morning and doesn't come back till late at night. He shakes Anakin awake and grins and asks if he wants to see his mother.

Anakin freezes, unable to move or speak, but some of his shock and hope must have rung out in the Force, because Obi-Wan just laughed and pulled him up off his bed and hugged him.

Anakin hadn’t realized how much he missed hugs until he started getting them again.

Obi-Wan told him the story on their way down to the lower levels. He’d called in favors and used up his meager savings to free her, bring her to Coruscant, get her a job waiting tables at Dex’s Diner, find her an apartment, pay the first month’s rent.

It’s too much. It’s much too much, and Anakin doesn’t want to cry again so he hums instead and the air around him shivers.

Shmi Skywalker has grey in her hair and lines on her face and new scars he doesn’t know the stories behind, but Anakin would recognize the song of her soul anywhere in the galaxy.

She holds his face in her hands, and Anakin can do nothing but wrap his arms around her and study her as she studies him, and listen.

“You’ve gotten so tall, my love,” she says, and Anakin breaks.

Mother and son cry and laugh and cling to each other, and the sound of their joy intertwining is the sweetest sound Anakin’s ever heard.

Obi-Wan ducks out of the apartment to give them some privacy, but Shmi marches after him and practically drags him back in by the ear, insisting that since he spent the last seven years raising her stubborn son he more than earned his spot at her table. So Obi-Wan and Anakin and Shmi sit in mis-matched chairs at a crooked table and drink tea that is only slightly stale, and talk.

C-3PO emerges out of a back room to say hello, chattering and thanking the Maker, and Anakin hasn't stopped laughing but now he laughs belly deep and shakes the last of the fear out of his bones. Hugging a droid isn't very pleasant, but it's a familiar comfort he thought he'd never experience again.

Shmi and Obi-Wan compare notes on Anakin’s childhood troublemaking, Anakin tells her all about his adventures on missions throughout the galaxy, C-3PO praises their new accommodations and tells Anakin how glad he is to be re-united, and Shmi shares news from Tatooine. How Kitster and Wald are doing, which of the old grandmothers have passed on. Those stories are hard to listen to, and bring back more long buried memories than he can process right now.

If Shmi notices his discomfort, she doesn’t say anything, but she does switch to asking questions about his training.

***

Anakin and Obi-Wan leave Shmi’s apartment just as dawn is beginning to break over the upper levels, and Anakin is happier than he ever remembers being.

The apartment is small and the hours at Dex’s will be long, but his mother has a thin scar on her thigh and jagged shard of black plastoid strung around her neck, and he can visit her regularly.

It had taken Obi-Wan years to get Anakin to understand that love and attachment were not the same thing. It wasn’t until he started using words like ‘possessive’ and ‘selfish’ to describe attachment that Anakin really grasped the difference between wanting to be a part of someone’s life and wanting to center your life around someone. Between valuing one life over many and treating all life as equally valuable. Between respecting people’s choices and resenting people’s right to choose.

If there is anything Anakin understands, it is the value of life and the precious nature of choice.

But. For all Obi-Wan’s warnings against attachment, when given the choice, Anakin had chosen to look back for his mother, and Obi-Wan had let him. Had enabled him, really, and Anakin had no idea how to go about repaying that debt.

That should be enough.

But. As he listens to the Force celebrate on the journey back to the temple, part of him remembers the push and pull of doors opening and closing, and he reaches up to surreptitiously tug at the twine around his neck.

Obi-Wan hadn’t ever asked about the chip, or mentioned the detonator.

For the first time, Anakin wonders if that was just because he didn’t know how to ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first Star Wars fic ever, and I have no idea what I'm doing in this fandom but I'm having a blast so far.
> 
> I was originally going to post this as one big long thing, but I finished the first half and got impatient, so it's a two-parter now. I have roughly a quarter of the second half written, but this story is my current writing obsession so I should have it up soon?
> 
> It has been a literal decade since I watched the prequal trilogy, so YouTube and Wikipedia were my friends while writing this and if it wasn't already a total snub of canon I would warn you that my timeline of events and details about who knew what information are probably way off. I hope you enjoy it anyway!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Padme is more beautiful than Anakin remembers. 

He’s unsure how to talk to her, or address her even. She used to show up in his dreams-- happy, peaceful dreams-- and even though he hasn’t been dreaming much lately he would recognize her face anywhere. They had talked and smiled when they were a slave boy and a handmaiden, and for a few fleeting moments as an Initiate and a Queen, but not yet as a Senior Padawan and a Senator. 

But she greets him with a smile, and he smiles back, and the lilting notes of her surprise and joy are clear and smooth. 

He’s making a fool out of himself if Obi-Wan’s smirk is anything to go by, but he honestly doesn’t care. Having a chance to talk to Padme and get to know her-- to match a personality and opinions with the face and voice that he knew so well by now-- was a gift. And he would not squander it. 

***

Guarding Padme is terrible and wonderful all at once. He wishes he were with Obi-Wan, because Obi-Wan is always where the action is, but being with Padme is relaxing and refreshing in a way not even visits to his mother can compare to. 

He realizes half-way through their first real conversation that he is-- probably, ardently, irrevocably-- in love with her. But just as surely as he knows he loves her, he knows she still sees him as a child. 

He’ll have to be content to wait, for now. Wait to grow up a bit more, at least in her eyes. 

So they talk and smile and it’s like they’ve never been apart. She asks him about his training, and about his family, and so he tells her stories of practicing lightsaber forms with Obi-Wan and sneaking out to visit his mother late at night. She tells him about her sister and her nieces, and about transitioning from Queen to Senator, and about her plans for her term. 

She asks what he plans to do once he’s Knighted. 

He shrugs and switches the topic. 

***

Anakin hasn’t had a dream in nearly two years, not since his mother arrived on Coruscant. He’d hoped maybe he’d finally outgrown them. 

He has a nightmare his first night on Naboo. 

Anakin is burning. The world all around him is red, and this time it’s from his own blood. This time he’s lying flat on his back in a sandstorm, screams lost in the wind, clutching the mangled stump of his leg with one hand and the cracked plastoid case of his signal jammer in the other. 

Anakin wakes up screaming, one hand on the twine around his neck and one digging into his thigh. 

Nobody comes to investigate. 

Anakin breaths deep and slow, getting out of bed to kneel on the floor and open his mind and heart to listen for the first time in days, finally far enough away from the ever mingling and muffling melodies of Coruscant to hear clearly. 

A jumbled dirge filters into his soul and his steady breath catches in his throat. 

This isn’t right. This isn’t the song he’s familiar with, or the notes that resonate with his being. 

Something is deeply wrong. 

***

When he receives an emergency comm from Obi-Wan her cry of despair nearly deafens him. 

***

Anakin wakes up burning. 

He thinks it’s a dream, and then he tries to move and pain tears through his body like wildfire, and he screams. 

His right arm is missing, leaving ash and embers, and he’s lying flat on his back in a medbay somewhere. He tries to sit up, but a hand gently pushes him back down and suddenly Obi-Wan is there, murmuring and pleading, and Anakin lets himself drift off into a sea of smoke and flame. 

***

When he wakes up the second time he’s in a familiar ward in the Halls of Healing, and Padme and Obi-Wan are sitting on either side of him, conversing in whispers over his body. He tries to clear his throat, but all that comes out is a croak. 

Obi-Wan is on his feet immediately, reaching for a cup and filling it at the sink while Padme bends over him and runs a hand through his hair. “You’re going to be alright,” she says. “And I’m so glad you’re alive.”

She brushes her lips softly against his forehead, and Anakin lets himself soak in the sound of her love-- not romantic love, not yet, but love all the same-- before she turns to Obi-Wan and says something about a meeting and ducks out the door. 

He’d be a lot more self-conscious about his vibrant blush if he wasn’t lying half-naked on a medical cot covered in more bacta and bandages than he’s seen in one place before. 

A chuckle drifts from the other side of the room, and Obi-Wan comes into sight with the cup and brings it carefully to Anakin’s mouth. He drinks slowly but steadily, downing the whole thing in one go, and feels more clear headed afterwards. 

But not by much. He’s trying to tune it out, but the grating din of the Force hasn’t let up since that night on Naboo. Whatever went wrong hasn’t been fixed yet, and there’s not a lot he can do from a cot, but there’s a lot he still doesn’t understand-- about Obi-Wan’s message, about the droids that attacked them and the soldiers who saved them. 

So he pulls himself up as best he can until he is sitting straight enough to see Obi-Wan’s face, and asks, “What happened?”

And Obi-Wan runs a hand through his hair and sighs, shoulders slumping in defeat, and sits down. And tries to explain. 

Like his mother, Obi-Wan has many scars and many stories, though it had taken Anakin years to realize it. Teaching has always been one of Obi-Wan’s strengths. He would answer any question to the best of his ability, was willing to talk through complicated situations and lay out complex scenarios with a patience Anakin could only dream of. 

So it is Obi-Wan’s inability to tell this story that tells Anakin just how bad the answer to his question really is. 

Obi-Wan starts at the end. 

He explains how the battle finished, how the fight with Dooku ended, how Anakin was taken back to the temple on an emergency medical transport, how Padme talked her way into the temple so she could be there when he woke up from surgery. 

He explains that he never meant for Anakin to get hurt, and there are notes of failure in Obi-Wan’s apology-- a toll of self-hatred when his eyes drop to the bandaged stump of Anakin’s arm-- and Anakin tastes bile in the back of his throat. 

He explains about walking right into a Sith ambush, about the vote to give Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers and his order to call in the unexpected army to save the Jedi. 

And, finally, Obi-Wan ends at the start. 

He explains how he tracked a bounty hunter to an unknown planet, and discovered an army of clones being grown on the Jedi’s orders and the Republic’s dime. Millions of men, created to be bought and sold and die in someone else’s war. 

Obi-Wan is standing by the end of it, pacing back and forth beside Anakin’s cot, frustration and exasperation and self-loathing coming off him in waves as he tries to explain what’s going to happen next. 

“The Council wants to make you Knight,” he says, pausing his steps long enough to meet Anakin’s gaze. “The galaxy is going to war. The Jedi are going to war.”

Anakin’s mind is reeling, the Force is shrieking and wailing and building to a crescendo, setting his teeth on edge and his hair on end. 

Something in the heavens and the earth and his whole being says ‘NO’. 

There is still something Obi-Wan hasn’t explained. 

And this time he knows how to ask. 

“Who has the detonator?”

Obi-Wan startles at that, confusion replacing exhaustion. “The det-- the what?”

“The detonator.” Anakin’s voice is steady, for all he wants to fly apart at the seams. The twine around his neck is still in place, he can feel the signal jammer resting in the hollow of his throat, hear the almost imperceptible whine that tells him it’s still working. “For the chips in the clones. Does the Republic have it or did they give it to the Jedi Council? There's too many for each to have an individual detonator, unless--? Obi-Wan, I need you to help me brainstorm. We’ve got to find that detonator.”

“What chips?” 

‘Skywalker’, she calls, but the scrape of her song against his ears is like stone against steel. 

“The explosives. Come on, what--”

“Explosives!?” 

It hisses like sand in the wind. 

“Explosives. Trackers. Chips. Whatever you want to call them.” 

“There are none.” 

Rustles like dry rags and straw. 

“Bantha shit. Who. Has. The detonator?”

Clamors and clangs like rusty chains. 

“There are no chips! Why would there be chips?” 

‘SKYWALKER’, she screams. 

Anakin takes a deep breath. “There is always a chip.” 

Obi-Wan goes white, and the swell of the erratic symphony breaks, and the tuneless roar that washes over Anakin cracks the windows and shorts out the medical equipment and sends Obi-Wan to his knees. 

“Find it,” Anakin Skywalker says, and Obi-Wan Kenobi rises to his feet, pale and shaking and terrified. 

Two healers come running in, panicking over the state of the room. Anakin doesn’t take his eyes off Obi-Wan. 

Finally, Obi-Wan nods, turns, and walks out. 

Anakin lets the healers fuss over him and hook him up to new equipment, adjust his bandages and re-apply bacta. When they give him painkillers he swallows them without a fight, and lets himself drift off, enveloped in a lullaby of gratitude and relief and love. 

***

He dreams of striding among the stars, following a winding path of blue and silver.

‘Skywalker’, she sings, and millions of voices throughout the galaxy rejoice. 

***

“I found it,” Obi-Wan says from the doorway, out of breath and pulsing with disgust, fury, sorrow. It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours. “I found it. It’s in their brains, and I don’t know who has the detonator.”

And Anakin’s world goes red. 

He surges from the medical cot, stumbling and reaching out to steady himself with a hand that’s no longer there. Obi-Wan is at his side in an instant, but Anakin will not allow himself to be carried to this confrontation. 

Striding out of the ward, he follows a winding path of blue and silver until he finds himself at the doors to the Council Chamber. 

Anakin Skywalker grips the ponderous doors with all the strength of his mind, and throws them open with a resounding crash. 

“What have you done?” he thunders, and the temple foundations tremble. 

The Council turns to him as one, faces a mix of shock and anger. 

“What is the meaning of this, Padawan Skywalker?” Mace Windu asks, stern expression shielding annoyance and frustrations and just a fraction of concern. “Shouldn’t you still be in medical?” 

“I want an explanation,” Anakin says, blue fire igniting his words. “I want to know why the Jedi are going to war. I want to know why protectors and peacekeepers are leading an army. I want to know who has the detonator.” 

“The detonator?” The Councilors look to each other, searching for answers in each other’s faces and finding nothing but equal confusion. 

Finally Windu turns back to him and asks, “The detonator to what?” 

And Anakin laughs. Anakin laughs until he cries, because he wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to ask. And the Council is growing more and more concerned and murmuring amongst themselves and the sound of the room is picking up speed and winding itself into a maelstrom of bitter emotion-- 

And then there is a hand on Anakin’s shoulder, and Obi-Wan is standing by his side, calm and unwavering as a clear sky at first noon, and Anakin wipes his eyes, and breathes.

“He means the detonator to the explosive chips implanted in the clone soldier’s brains,” Obi-Wan says. And it sounds so simple when he says it, such an easy concept to understand, such a straightforward topic to converse about. But there is a note of steel in his voice, a harshness he rarely lets slip, and Anakin knows this is as deadly serious as Obi-Wan gets. 

“The clone soldiers have--”

“Slave chips? Yes. Yes they do. And as of right now we don’t know who authorized their placement or who currently controls them, or even if every single clone has them. I think this information and its implications takes precedence over anything else, wouldn’t you say?”

Anakin wants to laugh again once he gets a good look at the Councilor's faces, but that desire is drowned out in a flash of rage. These are the people who should have known. It was their job to ask questions, and all of a sudden Anakin wonders if they didn’t ask because they didn’t want to know the answers. 

Windu leans forward in his seat, focus locked on Obi-Wan. “How do you know this?” 

“I asked. The survivors from Geonosis have all been crammed into the Senate Guard barracks and the surrounding buildings, as I’m sure you were all well aware.” The icy tone implies the conditions Obi-Wan found these men in were less than ideal, and Anakin tamps down another flare of rage. “I introduced myself and asked if there were any volunteers to undergo a medical exam for research purposes. They were suspicious, but eventually one-- he didn’t give me a name, just a number-- agreed to let myself and Healer Che run some scans. The-- the chips are well hidden. We had to do several scans of varying depths to find it. I took the liberty of having it removed, with the-- with CT-7567’s consent.” 

“Where is the chip now?” 

“Healer Che has it. She told me she’d keep it safe until we decide how to proceed.”

The Councilors make silent eye-contact amongst themselves, carrying on a worried discussion in an unspoken language. 

Finally, Shaak Ti breaks away from the wordless conversation and turns to Obi-Wan. “What would you suggest is the best course of action?”

“Don’t go to war.” Anakin shakes off Obi-Wan’s hand and steps forward to draw her attention, squaring his shoulders and clenching his fists. “Don’t go to war, and free the slaves.”

“It’s not as simple as that.”

“Why not?”

“The Separatists are being led by a Sith Lord--”

“So deal with the Sith Lord. Send a team of Shadows to capture him or execute him. You don’t need to work your way through his entire army to reach him.” 

“The Senate asked for our help,” Plo Koon says, sounding reluctant despite his words. 

Anakin glares. “Since when have the Jedi been the Senate’s attack dogs?”

“In the Senate’s employ, we are not,” Yoda agrees. “But bring peace to the galaxy, we must.”

“The galaxy, or the Republic? Because if you fight for the Republic you’re leaving the Separatists to fend for themselves. The same way you’ve let the Outer Rim fend for itself for the past few centuries.” 

Saesee Tiin looked indignant. “We aren’t going to align ourselves with oppressive systems of government.”

“But you’re going to defend democracy with an army of slaves?” Anakin met the eyes of each Council member one by one-- Plo Koon, Yoda, Eeth Koth, Ki-Adi Mundi, Shaak Ti, Mace Windu-- and spat on the marble floor. “The Jedi have become an Order of slavers and hypocrites.”

The Council chamber goes cold and quiet, the sound of the room diminishing to a low thrumming beat of rage and self-recrimination. Obi-Wan stares straight ahead, jaw tight, and says nothing to undermine Anakin’s declaration. 

Windu forestalls the building outcry with a raised hand, pinpoint focus now on Anakin. “What do you mean by that, Skywalker?”

There is nothing coming from him but a desire to understand, contrary to his counterparts. He doesn’t accuse, he asks. 

So Anakin answers. 

“I mean that I’ve studied your history of breaking chains and I’ve learned your philosophy of making choices, and yet every day I’ve spent in your temple I’ve been a slave.” 

Yoda raps his gimmer stick against the floor once. “Freed you, Qui-Gon did. Slave you are no longer.”

“Then why do I still have a chip?”

Shock erupts. 

Windu’s face doesn’t so much as twitch, but his whole being seems to sag. 

Anakin swallows, and pushes. “I’ve had a bomb implanted in my body since I was an hour old. I’ve never gone a day without calling somebody ‘master’. Nothing changed when Qui-Gon Jinn brought me here.” He pauses, struggling to put these feelings into words for the first time, and Obi-Wan’s hand comes up to rest on his back, steady and familiar. “Qui-Gon Jinn did not want to free slaves. He did not want to free Anakin Skywalker. He accidentally stumbled over ‘the Chosen One’ and tried to buy my mind with false promises.” 

“Say nothing, you did.”

“What was I supposed to say?” He scoffs, bitter and harsh. “I went straight from one master to another, and the rules were different but not different enough. How was I supposed to know what freedom was? It’s taken me years to have the courage to stand against you, but on this I will not be silent. This isn’t about me, this is about three million men you just bought to fight a war you don’t have a reason to be involved in.” 

There is silence for a long time after Windu finally takes his eyes off Anakin and leans back, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You’re right, Skywalker. About all of it.”

Yoda is the next to accede, ears drooping as he nods slowly. “Becoming what we swore to fight against, we are. Disgrace it is, that such pain has gone so long unheeded. Go to war we will not. Free slaves we will.”

Anakin takes a deep breath, and listens, and a few bright notes of hope ring clearly in the shifting song of the universe. 

“Thank you for bringing this to our attention Padawan Skywalker, Knight Kenobi. It’s late. We will reconvene tomorrow to discuss our next steps. You’ll be summoned, don’t worry.” Mace sighs. “Skywalker, you should get back down to medical. Talk to a Healer and get yourself a surgery scheduled.” 

“No.” 

Windu raises an eyebrow. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

Even Obi-Wan is looking at him in worried confusion, but this is his chip and his choice and he’s not going to let anyone else make the decision for him. He reaches up and tugs once at the twine. “I mean I’m not getting my chip removed until every man in the Republic’s new army has theirs removed. I want you to look at me every day and be reminded of how many people still have explosives in their brains, of how long it’s going to be before every one of those men is free. I want you to see me and know what I am and know why I’m here.” 

Mace bows his head, suddenly exhausted, and Obi-Wan gently pulls Anakin out of the Council Chamber. 

***

Instead of going back to the Halls of Healing, Anakin lets Obi-Wan help him walk to their rooms. His strength is fading and the pain in the remainder of his arm is flaring, but his blood sings with peace and his heart beats with purpose, and all is well. 

Once they’re safely inside, Obi-Wan guides him to a low couch and sinks down beside him. They exist in the same silence for a moment, uneasy and comforting all at once. Finally, Obi-Wan turns, and asks, “Are you-- can we--”

“Talk? Yeah. We probably should.”

“Can you tell me--” Obi-Wan nearly chokes on his question, but pushes through. “Can you tell me what you thought was happening? When Master Jinn first brought you to the temple?”

It takes Anakin a moment to sort out what he wants to say, what needs to be said now and what can wait for another time. When he speaks, his words hold none of the fire he turned on the Council and all of the pain he’s kept deep inside. “When an enslaved person is freed-- at least on Tatooine-- they take their detonator and destroy it, and if they can they get their chip removed. I was given my detonator, but Ma-- Qui-Gon Jinn took it from me and I never saw it again. So. I figured, I was still…” He shrugs. 

“You thought you were still a slave?”

“Yes.”

Obi-Wan is quiet for so long Anakin thinks the conversation is over, but then he sighs and settles an arm around Anakin’s shoulders and allows a rueful little smile to curve his lips. “That. Puts a lot of your past behavior into perspective, actually.”

“Heh.” Anakin drops his head onto Obi-Wan’s shoulder, breathing in the scent of tea that means home and safely just the same as the scent of his mother’s spices. “You know, I thought you had the detonator for the longest time.”

“I--”

“I know, I know.” Anakin sits back enough that he can meet Obi-Wan’s eyes, taking some measure of comfort in the horror there at the very suggestion even if it’s been years since he worried about making a mistake bad enough to warrant pain and threats, years since he ransacked his Master’s room looking for a small plastoid box. “But what did you expect me to think? You told me to call you ‘master’, and I… I wasn’t sure what had happened to it, so I just went along with it.”

“I’m sorry,” and Obi-Wan’s apology is weary and mournful and the chords smooth a fractured melody in Anakin’s song. “I had no idea what I was doing, and for all my knowledge of slavery, I wasn’t sure what to do for you. What questions to ask. What precautions to take.”

“You tried. You dragged me to the Halls of Healing and had them give me a full inspection, remember? Put me on a meal plan?”

“I supposed I did, didn’t I. Well. It obviously wasn’t enough.”

“Stop that.” Anakin knocks his forehead against Obi-Wan’s temple. “You tried, and I didn’t know how to ask for more, or if I was allowed to ask for more. It took me years to sort out that the Jedi weren’t just mindless slaves to the Order, and that if I really wanted to I could resign.”

“Why didn’t you?”

And that’s another question Anakin has to take a beat to sort out the answer to, another question he thought he’d never be asked. “I had nowhere else to go. I had no other family to rely on. And by the time you freed my mother, it just seemed…”

“It’s never too late.” 

And Obi-Wan holds him while he weeps. 

And that is more than enough. 

***

He dreams that night of standing in an open field on an unfamiliar planet shoulder to shoulder with a clone soldier. 

He looks around, half expecting to see mud and blue-painted bodies like so many of his dreams, but instead grass and flowers are growing knee-high, brushing against his black robes and the soldier’s white armor. Neither of them move, soaking in the peace and the warm breeze. 

Finally, the soldier sighs and takes off his helmet. His blond hair looks like a splash of sunlight against his dark skin, and his eyes, when he turns them on Anakin, are the golden-brown of desert sand. 

“You’ve made a good start, brother, but the story isn’t over yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next used to be one long one, but I decided to go back and split it... Now each chapter is roughly the same length instead of 5k and 9k respectively.


	3. Chapter 3

Anakin and Obi-Wan are summoned to an early Council meeting the next morning. Healer Che is there too, along with CT-7567, the clone who had his chip removed and still hasn’t given a name. 

When he takes off his helmet, Anakin is not surprised to see his hair is sunlight blond. 

The meeting gets right to business. 

First, CT-7567 gives his account of Kamino, of the training he’d undergone there and the lessons he’d learned about his place in the world. He is wary, but hopeful. Wanting to trust that the Jedi will do something to fix this but fully aware of how bad the backlash could be for him and his brothers. 

Anakin reaches out with the Force and wraps him in the sweetest sounds he knows-- Padme’s laughter and wind through tree branches and his mother’s voice-- and is rewarded when he gradually relaxes. 

Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow, but Anakin just shakes his head. 

“We didn’t know about the chips,” CT-7567 says, presence composed and determined but still hovering on the wrong side of terrified. “But we knew they’d done something to our brains. Aggression inhibitors, they told us.”

The room is stiff with horror and anger and guilt when he finishes his story, before the Councilors release their emotions into the Force one by one, like so many orchestrations dwindling down to a single instrument. 

Anakin wants to break something, but settles for digging his fingernails into his palms until the red in his vision leaches out through the cuts. 

Second, since the clones were officially commissioned by the Jedi but intended to serve as an army for the Republic, the question of who might have the detonator has no simple answer. The list of suspects spans the entirety of the Jedi Order and Senate for the past ten years in the least, and cannot be easily narrowed down. More information must be discovered before they can move forward with finding whoever mastermind this mess. 

“Dooku said something to me on Geonosis,” Obi-Wan says, cautiously. “He said the Republic-- the Senate-- was under the control of a Sith Lord. Darth Sidious. I didn’t believe him, of course, but what if…” 

It is decided that only the people in the room-- the Council, Obi-Wan, Che, Anakin, CT-7567-- are to know the full truth of the situation until they have a better idea of who can be trusted with the information about the chips and about the plan to deactivate them. Others will be brought in as need be to assist in the investigation. 

CT-7567 doesn’t look very happy with that, but he nods sharply and says nothing. 

Third, Dooku and the Separatists aren’t going to go away because the Jedi refuse to fight them. They must find some way to end this war before it begins, or make the Senate understand that neither the Jedi nor the clones are available to die in it. 

Dooku being a Sith Lord complicates some things, since handling the threat he poses to the galaxy is, in fact, a Jedi responsibility. 

The only thing saving them from having to make an immediate decision is that the Separatists haven’t outright attacked Republic space yet. The Battle of Geonosis was the first step, but neither side has yet taken the second. The Senate has been trying to set up a meeting with the Council to discuss strategy, but until the situation with the slave chips has been dealt with the Council will continue to stall. 

***

At the end of a full day of meetings, Anakin and Obi-Wan go back to their rooms. They have more of the same the next day, so they eat quickly-- Obi-Wan waiting to take his first bite until Anakin has taken his-- and prepare for bed. 

Obi-Wan helps Anakin rebandage his arm. 

It’s healing well, and Healer Che took a look at it just before the meetings started and mentioned something about coming down to be measured for a prosthetic soon. Anakin isn’t sure how to feel about that.

Obi-Wan’s guilt has lessened, but his distress is almost tangible. He spreads the last of the bacta and secures the ends of the bandage, and pulls Anakin into a tight hug. Neither of them speak. They hold each other, and breathe, and finally Obi-Wan pulls away with a sigh that turns into a yawn. 

They each head to their rooms, mumbling a polite goodnight before closing their doors. Anakin meditates for a bit, but without his usual tech to work on it’s hard to stay focused. 

He dreams that night of grass growing up through sand. 

***

“Excuse me, sirs,” CT-7567 asks at the next meeting, voice deceptively steady. “What are you planning to do with us once you get the chips out and stop the war?” 

Fourth, the clones have no legally recognized personhood. 

“Padme,” Anakin says. “We need Senator Padme Amidala.”

The Jedi can’t do anything about the clones legal standing. A Senator can. Padme can. 

So Senator Padme Amidala is cordially invited to a Jedi Council meeting the next morning, with the request that she act as an outside advisor on an issue the Council has been discussing. Anakin comms her shortly after the invitation is sent and asks her to accept. He can’t explain anything over an unsecured line, but from the tone of his voice Padme can hear this is of the utmost importance. She clears her schedule for the next day and picks out a subdued outfit. 

***

Padme listens to the whole story without interruption. 

When Mace Windu leans back in his seat, signaling the preliminary situation briefing finished, Padme takes two deep breaths, and smiles. 

“What can I do to help?” she asks. 

***

There are already laws in place that recognize cloned sentients as individuals and grant them all the legal rights that entails, but they only apply to Republic controlled space. Much like the laws against slavery and indentured servitude, Anakin notes to himself. 

“We like to say that slavery is illegal in the Republic, but really, all our laws do is make it illegal to enslave Republic citizens.” Padme was standing before the Council with a datapad in hand, voice carefully modulated as she presented her case with a skill born from long practice. Anakin couldn’t tear his eyes away. “It’s a handy little loophole that people have been exploiting for decades, and the more forward thinking in the Senate have been trying to fight for just as long. So, as it stands right now, the clones are legally classified as an exported product of Kamino ordered and purchased by the Republic, and since Kamino is an independent planet that was only doing business with the Republic, there isn’t much we can do about a humanitarian violation on that front. Taking Kamino to court over this would be a waste of time.”

“So is that it?” Anakin asked. “We can’t do anything legally so we have to, what? Wait for you to pass a new law and close the loophole?”

“That would take too much time, I’m afraid.” And then Padme smiled like breaking dawn, and Anakin wondered why he’d bothered to question her. “Fortunately, there is more than one loophole.” 

The air in the room was practically vibrating with expectation, and Anakin could see Windu pinching the bridge of his nose the way he’s learned means a shatterpoint is about to break. The rest of the Council must have noticed the atmosphere as well, because they leaned forward as one to hear what Padme had come up with. She had them all in the palm of her hand, and by the look on her face Anakin knew she was fully aware of that. 

“The only thing you have to do, is have Kamino elect to join the Republic,” Padme laid out smoothly, with just a hint of triumph underpinning her words. “Once Kamino is a member of the Republic with a voting seat in the Senate, their planetary government will have to comply with Republic laws. Since the clones are sentients who originated from and live full time on Kamino our laws would recognize them as citizens, which would also make them Republic citizens, which would afford them the same rights as all Republic citizens. I don’t need to tell you that the situation with the clones would be completely illegal and any petition that claimed otherwise would never hold up in court. That also means we can prosecute whoever created them and implanted those chips for unethical medical experimentation and enslavement of sentient beings.”

“The long-necks like their independence,” CT-7567 cuts in. “All that stuff you just said about prosecution for unethical medical experiments? They don’t want that kind of oversight. They haven’t joined before for those exact reasons. What makes you think now they’ll vote away their life’s work and autonomy all at once?” 

Padme’s smile is predatory. “What makes you think it’s the Kaminoans who will be voting?” 

***

Unfortunately, they cannot take control of Kamino until they know who has the detonator, and how to get it out of their hands. It’s too risky to free the clones in such a dramatic way if there is a chance revenge could take the form of indiscriminate murder. 

They have Shadows tracking paper trails, but whoever is behind this hid themselves well. It’s taking too long and every day the threat of a formal Separatist attack against the Republic grows. 

“Trace the signal back,” Anakin suggests. “Hack the chip and see what’s inside of it. See what or who it responds to.” 

Since nobody else has any better suggestions, they hand the chip over to a slicer and a xenobiologist and wait for them to report their findings. 

It’s not an explosive, and Anakin feels a brief rush of giddy delight that a mistake in their planning or a misstep in their meddling will not get these men’s heads blown off. And then he reads the lines of code pulled from the already decaying chip, and spends an hour in the fresher heaving up his empty stomach. 

It’s not an explosive. It’s worse. 

It’s a list of one-hundred voice activated orders, spanning a range of possibilities from ‘stand down’ to ‘press forward’ to ‘do not let them take you alive’. There are orders to kill commanding officers, to kill captives, to kill the Jedi. At least seven that detail different ways to commit suicide. 

CT-7567 reads the list and withdraws slowly into himself, face perfectly blank by the time he gets to the end. 

“We are loyal,” he says. “We are good soldiers. They didn’t have too-- We would have followed orders. Good soldiers follow orders.”

***

The chip is coded to only respond to orders from Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. 

***

The scanner takes three days to build. 

Anakin sets up his equipment in a private workshop and shuts himself inside until it’s done, only allowing Obi-Wan to enter with food and water. 

Working with his new cyberkinetic hand takes getting used to, but Anakin has mech droids to help this time, and access to brand new materials, and blue and silver sparks dancing in the corners of his eyes. 

He’s made so many changes from his original design, and finally figured out how to incorporate something that will short out the signal receiver in the chip without electrocuting the person. 

He briefly wonders what he would have done if he’d figured out how to disable his chip sometime in those first few weeks at the temple, but ruthlessly pushes those thoughts aside. 

It's no use asking some questions. 

Anakin sings as he works, a wordless melody that rises and falls with his heartbeat, filling the room with the sound of his soul and sinking into the wires and plastoid of his project. Every so often he reaches up and runs his fingers along the twine around his neck, brushes his thumb across the black body of the signal jammer, threads chords of righteous anger through his song. Every so often he thinks of his mother and Obi-Wan and Padme and his brother who has yet to give his name, boundless love harmonizing and eclipsing and shifting into a new rhythm. 

When the scanner is done he sits and looks at it for a long time, before pulling more materials towards himself and getting started on the next one. 

***

After weeks of planning and with every fail-safe they can think of in place, the Jedi act. 

Quinlan Vos gets a lead for the location of Count Dooku, and between one hour and the next he and a handpicked team of Shadows have dropped off the map in pursuit. 

Shaak Ti, Plo Koon, and Obi-Wan Kenobi gather more information on Kamino, talking to CT-7567 and recovering wiped files from the archives. The day before they leave CT-7567 corners Obi-Wan and gives him a small holorecorder, tells him to find CC-2224 and talk to him in private. 

“You have to have him on your side. If you have him, you have the rest of the brothers, and you’re going to need them all working together if you want to take down the scientists and trainers.” CT-7567 shifts slightly, unused to confiding in an outsider, but his determination does not falter. “He’s not going to trust you, but he’ll trust me. Give him that before you do anything else.” 

Obi-Wan takes the holorecorder with both hands, and nods. 

The final stage of the plan will commence when the Shadows and the Kamino team complete their objectives. So Mace Windu waits at the temple, dueling rigorously with Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar, and Saesee Tiin in preparation for confronting Chancellor Palpatine. 

Anakin goes to the clone barracks. 

***

CT-7567 meets him in the entryway, helmet off, and leads him to the empty hanger that passed for a common room. It's absolutely packed with identical young men in identical black outfits, individuality regulated to hairstyles and tattoos. 

The noise stops abruptly as soon as Anakin enters the room, cutting off mid-sentence as men rose from where they were lounging on the bare floor to stand at attention in identical rows.

“At ease, brothers,” CT-7567 says. “He’s got something he wants to say to us.”

Not a single one of them moves. 

So Anakin sits down on the cold duracrete and crosses his legs, placing his bundle in his lap. 

And Anakin waits. Patiently, silently; not smiling, but not frowning either. 

One by one the men shift, shuffle, glance at each other. One by one they let their shoulders relax and their suspicion show, some returning to the ground but most splintering off to stand shoulder to shoulder in small groups. Their attention is focused completely on Anakin, but the hum of the room is tense. 

So Anakin waits. 

When the tone finally shifts from fear to curiosity, Anakin unwraps his bundle and holds up the scanner. “I don’t know how much 67’ told you, but this tool can find and disable the control chips in your brains, and I’d like to use it on anyone willing.” 

***

It takes hours, but every one of the brothers gets his chip disabled. 

CT-7567 stands next to Anakin throughout the whole process, offering reassurance to the more suspicious brothers and introducing the more enthusiastic. He never introduces them with names, just numbers. Sometimes he pauses just before rattling off a CT serial code, and Anakin can see the name hovering on the tip of his tongue before he swallows it down. 

He doesn’t ask. Some things must be given freely. 

When the last of the brothers rises to his feet and walks away, relief ringing out, CT-7567 sinks to the ground next to Anakin and puts his head in his hands, thumb unconsciously tracing a hairline scar. 

“I know it’s not over yet...” he trails off, staring at the floor. 

“But we’re getting closer.” 

CT-7567 doesn’t respond to that right away, and Anakin doesn’t push. 

After a long moment, he sighs and leans back against the wall, turning desert eyes on Anakin, searching his face for something. He seems to find it, because he relaxes slightly and says, “I couldn’t tell them anything. I think that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, keeping secrets from my brothers. They knew something was wrong from the start-- CT-411 was all over me the second I got back from that kriffing surgery, pestering me for details anytime he caught me sneaking back in after a meeting-- but I couldn’t say anything.” 

Anakin grimaces. “I hate keeping secrets, too. I guess honesty runs in the family.” 

And CT-7567 laughs. A surprised, startled laugh, but a laugh all the same. He laughs, and cries a little too, and then he wipes his eyes and says, “Thank you, sir.”

“No. My name is not sir, or Padawan, or Master, or slave. My name is Anakin Skywalker.”

“Then… Thank you. Anakin.” And then he hesitates, but Anakin’s gaze doesn’t waver. And then CT-7567 sets his jaw and tips his chin up, and says, “My name is Rex.” 

***

Anakin stays in the barracks for the next week-- wandering around the facility and getting to know the brothers, teaching anybody who showed interest how to build a scanner, and sleeping on the floor next to Rex. 

Every morning Anakin woke up and wiped stardust out of his eyes. 

On The Day, he receives no warning except an early morning comm from Obi-Wan saying ‘today’, and so he asks for a private corner to sit in, and spends The Day listening. 

He can hear when something changes, can hear every note of the death and deliverance that resonates throughout the galaxy, but has no context for any of the orchestrations. In the end, he finds out most of what happens the same way the rest of the galaxy does: on the news. 

The holorecording of the fight between Mace Windu and Darth Sidious is plastered all over the holonet within minutes of its release to the public, showing four Jedi Masters tag-teaming the Sith Lord, being whittled down until Windu is the only one standing. 

The blow that took Sidious’s head was uncoordinated and desperate and final, and the shout of triumph and joy in the Force shook Anakin to his core. 

***

Mace Windu and Kit Fisto are carried out on stretchers, Agen Kolar and Saesee Tiin in body bags. 

Darth Sidious’s body is already decomposing, and is burned where it fell. 

Not even four hours after the holorecording first aired, a breaking news announcement reports that Count Dooku was captured and is in Jedi custody, awaiting trial before the Jedi High Council for use of the Dark Side of the Force. 

***

Obi-Wan comms the next day to tell Anakin about Kamino. 

Shaak Ti and Plo Koon had walked right up to the front door and asked to speak with the lead scientist, Nala Se, while Obi-Wan snuck in through a window and told the first clone he found that he had an urgent message from CT-7567 to CC-2224. 

CC-2224 had been exactly as untrusting as Rex warned, and ordered three of his brothers to lock Obi-Wan in a supply closet and stand guard while he listened to the message. 

He’d come back not ten minutes later and let Obi-Wan out of the closet, introduced himself as Cody, and asked what the plan was. 

An hour later Kamino was in the hands of the brothers. Every scientist and trainer had been captured and placed in secure cells, the facility was on hard lockdown with brothers in every control booth and signal tower, and dozens of Anakin’s scanners had been distributed and were making the rounds in the barracks. 

Once the Jedi had explained the situation and given their suggestions, Cody took the lead in the aftermath. He called together the rest of the brothers trained for command and set up a meeting to decide on their next move. They had other options besides the one prescribed by the Jedi. 

In the end, the decision was left to the brothers as a whole. Cody gave a speech in the mess hall and asked a slicer to send out a survey to each brother’s personal comm, and responses came flooding in within seconds. 

With 93% of the brothers in favor, Kamino would be joining the Republic. 

Cody and Obi-Wan had the necessary paperwork in order-- a hasty constitution, a petition to join, and the results of the citizen-wide vote-- and sent off twenty-seven hours later. 

***

The reveal that Supreme Chancellor Palpatine was a Sith Lord attempting to start a galaxy wide war threw both the Republic and the Separatists into chaos, and the capture of Count Dooku hours later only added to the mess. 

The Senate held an emergency election the day after the execution and imprisonment, and Bail Organa was voted in as the new Supreme Chancellor. 

Anakin remained in the barracks with the brothers. The Council didn’t outright protest, so he assumed they either didn’t care or were too busy with other things to care. Padme commed him periodically to keep him updated, and he dutifully passed her messages on to the brothers. 

They knew as soon as Kamino was officially named a planet of the Republic, when peace talks were scheduled to begin with the fractured remains of the Separatists, what laws and regulations were in review after allowing a Sith Lord to take over the Senate. 

When the trials for the Kaminoan scientists and trainers were slotted for. 

Padme was confident the Senate could root out the rest of Sidious’s corruption, and Anakin was inclined to believe her. If anyone could rebuild a government from the inside out, it would be Padme, with her spine of steel and vibrant soul-song. 

***

In the days afterwards, emergency relief rushed to Kamino from both the Jedi Order and the galaxy at large. 

Volunteer Doctors worked side by side with MedCorps to remove chips en-masse, care for the developing embryos yet to be decanted, and create a gene therapy regime that would reverse the clone’s accelerated ageing. A few unlucky individuals were assigned to sort through the Kaminoan scientist’s research and data and destroy any remaining genetic material. 

EduCorps set up workshops to teach basic skills like construction and cooking and childcare, as well as a pre-school of sorts for the younglings who had not yet begun their military training. ArgiCorps and upwards of a thousand brothers worked together to build massive hydroponics systems wherever they could find the space. Even ExplorCorps got involved, replacing or adding Kamino to any star maps it was missing from and offering future assistance if the clones ever want to start a new colony on a dryer planet. 

The plan is for Jedi presence on Kamino to gradually decrease as the brothers complete gene therapy and finish setting up a government. Cody is officially in charge, but the brothers are going to need more than one man standing between them and the Senate. 

After the initial frenzy calms, the Geonosis survivors pack up their armor and prepare to go back to the only home they've ever known to undergo their own surgeries and receive gene therapy-- to stand with the rest of their brothers for whatever is to come. 

Rex goes with them, of course, but before his transport leaves he grips Anakin by the back of the neck and presses their foreheads together. 

“Vor entye. Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum, vod,” he says, and Anakin may not speak Mando’a, but he hears Rex loud and clear. 

***

The day Anakin gets word from Rex that the very last of the Tubies has received the delicate surgery to remove the control chip from their developing brain, he goes to see Healer Che. 

He brings his own scanner. 

“It was there all this time,” she says, studying the results of the scan on her datapad. “I can’t believe I didn’t catch it. I did a full body scan. It’s a basic procedure. And I still didn’t catch it.”

“You didn’t know how to look for it, and I didn’t know how to ask. It’s not your fault.”

“Regardless, I’m sorry. I feel like I failed you.”

“The ones to blame are the ones who implanted the chip.”

She didn’t look so sure, but she didn’t pursue it any further either. 

The chip was deep, almost to the bone. He wouldn’t be able to walk for at least a week after the surgery. 

He scheduled it for the next morning. 

***

When he wakes up, Obi-Wan is dozing in a chair across the room, still in his traveling clothes. 

There is a tray on the table next to the bed holding a small silver chip-- not bigger than a fingernail-- and a swathe of bandages and bacta wrapped around his thigh. 

Anakin reaches up with his cyberkinetic, lifts the twine carefully over his neck, and places the signal jammer on the tray.

Then he lays back and lets the tears fall, and listens to the chords of peace in the starlit song of his soul, and wonders what his mother would say if she knew how often he’s been crying lately-- how much water he’s wasting like that. He decides she wouldn’t mind. There is plenty of water to spare on Coruscant. 

Eventually a Healer comes to check on him and change the bandages, and wakes Obi-Wan up in the process. When she leaves Obi-Wan pulls his chair next to Anakin’s bed and takes his hand. “How do you feel?”

“I don’t know. Different. Like I can breathe. Whole.”

Obi-Wan smiles with a hint of guilt, but Anakin smiles back clear and bright, and then Obi-Wan starts crying too. 

‘What a pair we make’, Anakin thinks as he rolls his eyes and pulls Obi-Wan onto the cot. 

***

The Healer releases Anakin the next day with a prescription of painkillers and strict bed-rest. Obi-Wan helps him get settled on the couch and brings him tea and broken mousedroids, and then sits by his feet with his own mug and a holonovel. He doesn’t read though, just stares into his tea until Anakin kicks him with his good foot and asks, “What?” 

Obi-Wan turns to face him. “The Council is very impressed with you, you know. They wanted to Knight you after Geonosis, and now they’re willing to consider the part you played in bringing the issue of the slave chips to their attention and helping resolve it as your Trials. Say the word, and you will be Knighted.”

And Anakin looks at Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan looks back, steady and serene as ever. And Anakin remembers all the questions he asked about the Jedi Code and all the questions he didn’t ask about his own desire to follow it. “You once told me that being a Jedi meant sacrificing personal feelings and desires for the good of all. I don’t think--” 

And Anakin pauses, and listens, and sorts out the words he’d never thought he’d have a choice to say. “I don’t think I can do that. I don’t want to do that. I want to help as many people as I can, of course. But I don’t want to give up my name. My memories and thoughts and beliefs belong to me even if I spend the rest of my days following the Force.”

Obi-Wan tilts his head. Not condemning, considering. “You don’t want to be a Jedi, or you don’t think you can be a Jedi?”

“I did not choose to be a Jedi. Or, if I did, I didn’t know what I was choosing. Now I know. And now, I want to make a different choice.” 

And Obi-Wan asks, “What do you want to do?”

And Anakin says, “I want to go back to Tatooine, and free the slaves.” 

***

The Council doesn’t argue. 

The Force trills mournfully around them, but they do not speak until Anakin is finished announcing his intentions and laying out his reasoning. 

“You have done well, Skywalker,” Mace Windu says for them all. “You were a credit to the Order, and we will not forget what you have done for the galaxy. Go, and may the Force be with you.”

They do not say anything about his lightsaber, so Anakin packs it along with his toolkit and a few extra robes. 

He has a feeling he’s going to need it. 

Obi-Wan walks him to the temple doors, eyes bright with unshed tears, and pulls him into a hug just before he crosses the threshold. 

“I’m proud of you,” he whispers, voice hoarse. “And I love you.”

“I know,” Anakin whispers back. 

***

Anakin goes straight from the temple to his mother’s apartment, sending brief comms to Rex and Padme on the way to let them know how his meeting went. When he gets there he sets his pack beside the couch and starts making dinner in the cobbled together kitchen. Shmi comes home an hour later to a hot meal and a long hug.

After the dishes were washed and the leftovers put away, Anakin sat his mother down and explained the choice he’d made. 

“I’ve decided that I’m going to be the one to refuse,” he says. “I’ve decided I want to fight.”

“I’m going to be the one to say no.”

He cupped his mother’s face gently and held her gaze. “I’ve decided to put my mind to use for the good of all. And… I want to thank you, for the gift of my name.”

And Shmi Skywalker pulls her son into her arms, and laughs, and says, “It was freely given, and you have chosen to give it freely. I could not be more proud.” 

***

He dreams of wielding his lightsaber in the slave quarters of Tatooine. 

It is night, only the flash of blue and silver and the faint glow of the stars to illuminate the streets. His mother stands beside him, and Kitster and Wald, adults now, stand at the front of a crowd gathered before him. 

The sand whips through the narrow streets, the sting against his skin and the scrape against his cyberkinetic filling his ears with tense anticipation.

‘Skywalker,’ the stars call. 

And this time, Anakin answers. 

***

By the time he is nineteen, Anakin Skywalker has a cyberkinetic hand and hairline scar on his thigh, and stories of his own to tell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S DONE. 
> 
> Writing this was a wild ride, and this is officially both my first SW fic and my longest finished fic. I'm kinda proud of myself, not gonna lie. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, all you lovely readers you!!!


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